ios

One of the cooler things about Android is the ability to customize almost all aspects of the UI. From themes, to icon packs, to widgets, replacement apps, etc. iPhone users, on the other hand, have been forced to stare at the icons and colors that Apple chose for them with each iteration of iOS. That is, unless they’re jailbroken. One of the most popular jailbreak apps/tweaks that’s been around for a long time is called Winterboard. It’s a theme enabling app that allows other developers to make their own themes for Winterboard and then it’ll apply it to the device’s […]

Touch ID doesn’t have as many uses as most people would like it to. You basically can use it to unlock your device and purchase things in the App Store, but that’s it. A lot of people have mentioned why not allow it to auto-fill passwords like fingerprint scanners on laptops used to be able to do? One person who wondered that, happens to be a jailbreaking programmer and he’s sick of wondering. His app, called iTouchSecure, allows you to use your fingerprint to auto-fill passwords once you’ve input the password in once. It’s a welcomed expansion of Touch ID’s

One of the strange limitations of iOS is the restriction on where you can put your app icons on the home screen. As soon as you put an icon on the home screen, it has to fall behind the last icon on that page. You can move it around on that page but it has to always keep that un-breaking chain of icons intact. Thanks to being jailbroken and a simple little tweak called Gridlock, that no longer has to be the case. After installing Gridlock, you’ll have the ability to put icons anywhere on the home screen. Here’s how

Unlike Android, Apple doesn’t allow you to replace any of the default apps with other versions. So the phone, messaging, and email app are ones you have to be stuck with. That is, of course, if your not jailbroken. Once you jailbreak, you can make those changes so long as developers have made new versions of the apps in question. Thankfully the team behind BiteSMS has taken up the challenge for jailbroken only devices and released a replacement messaging app. With tons of new features, including quick reply and quick compose, adding contact pics to the messaging threads, and tons

If we’re honest, there’s a lot going on in the status bar that you don’t really need. Besides that, there are other things you might want to add to it. Thanks to a jailbreak tweak called StatusModifier, you can do both. This jailbreak tweak allows you to adjust the date and time and show it in the status bar, remove the battery icon, and even display the amount of free RAM available. I. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad To do this procedure you must be jailbroken. If you aren’t, you can head to our Jailbreak How To’s section and pick the jailbreak for your

Before we showed you an app that allowed you to lock down individual apps with your fingerprint in the form of a free jailbreak tweak. There is now a new one though that has the ability to lockdown settings pages, toggles, and apps with your fingerprint (and a nicer UI). This new one isn’t free, however, but with it’s extra functionality and better looks, it might be worth it to you. Here’s how to lock specific settings and apps with your fingerprint on the iPhone 5S. I. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad To do this procedure you must be jailbroken. If you

Perhaps you’re sick of looking at the words “AT&T” or “T-Mobile” or whatever other carrier name is at the top of the screen. You know what carrier you have (and are reminded every month by a bill in the mail) so why do you need to stare at it all day long?! A jailbreak tweak called Zeppelin can solve that dilemma by allowing you to select a custom icon to use in place of the carrier name. Oh, and did I mention there are over 900 icons in the Cydia store you can download from other developers to use with

Some people like the animations in iOS 7, but I guarantee you won’t miss them when you see much faster apps seem to open after using this jailbreak tweak. The tweak in question is aptly named NoSlowAnimations and it’s as easy as just installing it from Cydia to have it speed up all the animations when using the device. For an even larger boost in perceived speed, you can also disable Motion afterwards. Below are the steps for how to speed up the animations on your iPhone / iPad running iOS 7. I. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad To do this procedure

Ever want to change the colors of the bubbles in the messaging app? How about add the contact’s image you’re talking to into the mix? Thanks to a jailbreak tweak released in Cydia called Messages Customizer, you can. In addition to changing the colors and adding contact photos, you can also make the bubbles larger, add a gradient to older messages, and even remove the tails on each message to get rid of that slightly cartoony look of speech bubbles. Here’s how to customize the messaging app on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 7. I. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad To

You may not know it, but there are a lot of different options for your iPhone’s home screen aka Springboard. These settings aren’t available for you to change normally, but thanks to a developer on the Cydia app store there is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to view and alter these settings to your heart’s content. You can get lost in the amount of changes you can make, but for someone who want’s total control over how their iPhone is operating, it’s a godsend. I. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad To do this procedure you must be jailbroken. If you aren’t,

Bytafont, a popular jailbreak tweak for altering the system font of your iPhone or iPad has been updated to work with iOS 7 and with 64bit chipsets (like the iPhone 5S). Now, you can change the font of your iOS device to, say, Cursive if your heart desired. Finally a use for Cursive! The app also has the added benefit of setting different fonts for the keyboard, camera, iBooks, and system separately. Oh, and did I mention, it’s free? Give it a try. Here’s how to change the font of your iOS 7 device using Bytafont. I. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad

Sometimes you don’t want to have to go searching through all of those apps you’ve downloaded over the years to get to the ones you use often. Instead of just piling all of the apps on to the first home screen, why not put them in the stationary dock at the bottom of the screen for even quicker access. Using a jailbreak tweak called Infinidock ($1.99 in the Cydia Store), you can not only make the dock scrollable, but you can even add more than the normal four icons if you wanted. Here’s how to use Infinidock to make the

The Jailbreak tweak Applocker has been around for a while. Usually it’s used on a jailbroken iPhone to lock down specific apps by requiring a passcode whenever anyone tries to open them. Even though this isn’t a new tweak, it did just get an update that got it a lot of attention. The update allowed iPhone 5S users to use their fingerprints stored in Touch ID (the program included in iOS 7 that allows them to use their fingerprints to make purchases and unlock the device’s screen) to unlock the apps instead of entering in a passcode. Pretty neat, no?

After you jailbreak you iPhone, one of the great benefits are tweaks that allow you to customize your device in ways you wouldn’t normally be allowed to. Some of the most useful of these changes are the ability to add gestures (i.e. pinch with three fingers on the screen causes an action to happen), button shortcuts (i.e. using the Touch ID to go home instead of having to push the button), and custom menus (having a set of actions appear conveniently on the screen whenever you do a certain gesture or push a button). Thankfully, Activator, available in the Cydia

If you have Cydia Substrate installed (formerly known as Mobile Substrate) on your jailbroken iPhone (which you should as a lot of tweaks require it to work), you can use a feature called Safe Mode to get your iPhone or iPad out of a boot loop and get in to Cydia to disable whatever tweak you installed that might have caused the issue. I. Turn off the iPhone or iPad 1. If it is stuck in a loop hold down the Power and Home buttons and continue to hold them. 2. Release them after the Apple logo appears and then